


Jamais Vu

by zzoaozz



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, Memories of Childhood Physical Abuse, Sex Under an Outside Influence, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-04-26
Packaged: 2017-12-09 13:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zzoaozz/pseuds/zzoaozz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamais Vu: The opposite of déjà vu, a feeling of never before having seen or done something that is actually familiar.-</p><p>Someone or something has attacked the mansion.   Four victims lay trapped inside their own minds,  their memories lost.  Those who remain struggle to discover some answer that will free them from their strange prisons.   Charles turns to a long lost love.  Wolverine relives memories long buried and powers surge out of control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

Jamais Vu: The opposite of déjà vu, a feeling of never before having seen or done something that is actually familiar.-

-Wind And Wings-

Warren sat up blinking in the dim light from the window. He felt disconnected from himself as he lifted the heavy arm draped over his side. He stroked the soft, blue fur as he sat up and swung his legs over the bed. Cold! His bare feet pulled back from the hardwood floor for a moment then settled again more tentatively. His wings straightened back behind him as he rose quietly from their bed and padded across the floor to the window. He was dreaming. He was sure of that. The moon had never glowed off the pristine snow that way before. His sky blue eyes followed the radiance upward to the full moon. The sky seemed to ripple around the moon like heatwaves off pavement. He heard Hank sigh softly in his sleep and smiled. The motion seemed oddly distant, not a part of himself.

He was distracted by sounds. He could hear lots of things he never had before, the sound of the stars singing like the tinkling of a thousand chimes, the deeper steadier drum of the earth herself beating like a heart, and of course the high, sweet harpsong of the moon's light. He walked forward following a slanting beam of moonlight that beckoned him onward. It struck him that he should think it odd when he walked right through the wall but for the life of him he could not imagine why. He rose into the sky. The cold wind danced along his nude body and stroked his wings like a lover's touch. Lover, yes he should tell his lover that he was- something- what? The flash of a dew drop on a trembling oak leaf caught his eye. He flew toward it gliding effortlessly, barely moving his wings. He did not need his wings because he was the wind itself. 

-Left Behind-

Henry shivered and pulled the comforter up pressing closer to Warren. His lover was ice cold. The Angel always slept nude and it was pretty much impossible to keep blankets over his restless wings. They were only still when confined in the leather harness he wore to hide them or when he was unconscious or in deep sleep as he was now. He usually woke up with the younger man draped over him or practically underneath him. He liked to tease him about it, accuse him of loving him for his thick, cobalt fur. He was always hot and the winged mutant was always cold. He inhaled the intriguing scent that clung to his feathers and sighed contentedly. He tucked the blankets around them both and snuggled up against his side stroking the skin beneath his wing. Angel was on his belly as usual with his arms curled around his pillow and his wings flopped out brushing the floor on his side of the bed and stretched out over the doctor to hang off the other edge as well. It was amazing how much space such an athletically built man could take up in even their huge bed. He smiled at his angel and kissed his chilled shoulder before sliding back down into sleep. 

-Fire Dance-

Remy opened his glowing red on black eyes and blinked. Red light poured through his window and turned the darkness of the room into a strange wonderland. He sat up slowly, but there was no trace of the hangover he had half expected. The glow seemed to crawl over his tanned skin like a living thing with weight and warmth and texture. It was hot, he realized, almost fever hot, but he was comfortable in his bare skin. His long auburn hair lifted and swayed around his angular features stirred by the convection of the intense heat. He stood and walked to the window that looked out over the pond and the pool house. 

The sun hung huge and low on the horizon staining the sky crimson and gold. Had he slept through the day, he wondered vaguely. It would not be the first time but surely someone would have come to wake him. Who? Why? The questions slipped from his mind as he watched the sunset's fire flicker on the water like flames. The rippling waves reflected in his room and in the painted sky around the sun, like heatwaves rising from the summer pavement. He smiled as the wild, exotic music of the flames filled him, stirring him. He danced with a slow sensuousness across the floor and through the window, moving like a spark on the breeze to the pool of shifting flames. He sank down into the flames like a phoenix going to ground in the heart of the volcano but he knew no fear of being burned because he was the fire. 

-Ice Water- 

Bobby's breath plumed in the air, condensing into frost on his pillow. He opened his pale blue eyes and looked into the dark room, listening for the sound that had awakened him. Like a sleepwalker, he pushed the covers off of him and stood. He wondered vaguely where his pajamas had gone. They were his favorite pair with little yellow smiley faces on them. Maybe someone took them. Maybe it was a joke. It was not important though because the sound was calling to him, a thousand tiny voices singing to him in a rich ebb and flow of harmony. He gazed out his window and saw his own reflection, blond haired, fair skinned, and he knew it was him but somehow he could not recall having ever seen it before. The ice crystals drifting lazily down in the window light sparkled and glowed as if from within as they whispered and laughed at his confused musings. He smiled at them. 

The ground was white and as he walked right through the wall that probably should have been solid and stepped down onto the smooth packed surface, he heard it crunch invitingly, skiing snow, sledding snow. There were so many types of snow. The Eskimos had a hundred words. He had memorized thirty or so before he got bored. This was muruaneq a deep, soft snow and qetrar, snow that has crusted over on top. It was beautiful and unbroken and great fun to play in, but it was deceptive too. Breaking through the crust and wading through the thick loose snow beneath wore you out faster than you expected. The air was colder than the sparkly blue and silver let on. You wore yourself out and soon found your breath burning in your lungs. This kind of snow lured people out then let them burn up their reserves and fall to fall asleep and never wake up. Most people had no idea but he was the Iceman and he knew. 

People, people were waiting on him. Back in his room a discordant jangling sounded. It was time to wake up from this cool dream because he had com duty. He was supposed to relieve Logan somewhere, some thing, it did not matter because the mansion grounds ended and below him was the ocean and he was walking - no drifting, floating, falling down like a snow flake, like a rain drop, like the morning dew, and there was nothing solid in him, he was fluid, he was liquid, he was shaped by his own will and the water welcomed him and caressed his naked flesh because he was one with it, he was the ice, he was the water, he was the snow and he laughed and played within it. Up above him the sun was a vague corona of silver light above the snow clouds and it rippled almost the way hot pavement made the air seem to ripple in the mall parking lot in summer, but it was winter here and his kind of winter, he laughed at the sun and his laughter came flowing back to him like a succession of waves on the sea that should not be there but was.

-Shift Change-

Logan looked at the clock and growled spitting the butt of his cigar onto Scott’s neatly printed duty roster. "Where ya at, Frosty, dammit? I'd like to get a little shuteye myself. He buzzed the room again and got no answer. "Shit." 

He looked at the clipboard, Gambit was next in line. The Cajun thief was a light sleeper. If the Snowman did not have his lazy ass in the command chair in ten minutes, he would buzz Gumbo and let Bobby have a good taste of Gambit's particular flavor of getting even. No one made you repay like Remy LeBeau. He should know, he thought with a chuckle, he was on the receiving end often enough. He growled and hit the call button again. His enhanced hearing caught the sound of the alarm clock faintly from two floors up but no answering sound of feet on the floor. “Fine, Ya asked for it, Snowball.” He keyed Gambit’s room and waited for a response.

-Amber Earth-

Victor Creed's pupiless, amber eyes opened as the ringing of a buzzer jarred him from the first sleep he had managed to get since the X-bastards had caged him in this prison cell. He roared his anger then blinked when it did not ring back from the metal walls. He looked around curiously. The room was full of light, the deep honey colored light of a summer morning. The air seemed to shimmer. He had a fondness for standing on hot pavement in summer and feeling the waves of heat baking through his body from the soles of his feet up and this was the same deep, soothing heat. He flexed the long, clawed toes of his feet at the thought and grunted. They were bare, in fact he was naked. Someone had undressed him - no that feat would be impossible. He was chained and belted to a metal slab and an IV was pumping in tranquilizers. He looked at the site and there was no needle, no line, no cuffs either. He was unbound, though he still seemed to feel a heavy weight bearing down on him. It must be the air, he thought, not so much air as something heavier. 

He stood up, a big man at nearly eight feet tall and massively built, muscles bulging from a vaguely feline form, long tawny gold hair spilling in a mane down his back. He heard something, a heavy throbbing sound like the beat of a heart. His own heartbeat slowed to match it and the pressure eased. He walked through the wall as if pulled by an unseen force and found himself in a cavern. Rock formations ran ceiling to floor and ledges lined the walls. Boulders and piles of earth and stone were scattered everywhere. A river of molten lava ran through it, and on the ceiling was a shimmering ball of gold and amber and red that could only be an underground sun. He climbed to the top of a high plateau of rock and stood there soaking in the heat that was part of him now. This was his place, this place was him, the earth, ancient, unchanging, never quite at peace, and unforgiving but eternal. He threw his head back and roared and the earth trembled and roared with him. 

-Four Down-

Logan growled and stomped up the stairs to Bobby Drake's room once a bleary eyed Nightcrawler settled in at the com panel. He threw open the door and coughed as a cloud of water vapor hit him. He waded through it into the room and looked around in disbelief. It was covered in a sparkling layer of ice, walls, window, dresser, desk, bed, and of course Iceman himself. He walked over to the bed and reached out then thought better of it and took off his jacket wrapping it around his hand to shake Bobby's shoulder. 

"Hey Icey, wake up. You made a mess in here. Bobby? Wake up, kid."

He began to realize something was wrong. The other X-Man was not moving at all, not even normal sleep movements. He touched his com badge. "Crawly, wake Hank up, tell him to come check on Iceman and wear his fur coat. I think maybe his powers got outta hand in his sleep or something. I'm gonna go see why Gambit didn't answer either. I got a bad feeling."

Hank grunted and sat up ignoring the bad pun Nightcrawler had faithfully repeated. He reached over and shook Warren's shoulder. "Dearest, something is up in the mansion." He pulled on the clean trunks and lab coat he kept beside the bed before realizing his lover had not stirred. "Warren?" He walked around the bed. "Darling?" His hand rested on a cheek that was cold and unresponsive. His heart seemed to clench in his chest as he checked his pulse. It was fast and thready, far too irregular. He got him rolled over and flashed a pin light into his eyes. No reaction at all. He laid his head on the broad chest to hear first hand the reassuring beat of his heart just for a moment then scooped him up and carried him into the med lab.

He got the sensors working and waited impatiently the few seconds it took them to find Warren’s normal readings and throw up a comparison. He would have cried out in dismay when he saw the brain wave patterns but his doctor's training overrode his lovers' concern and he grabbed his bag and ran for Bobby's room. He barely had time to wrap his young friend in a thermal sheet and carry his limp form down to the med lab when he heard a low urgent beeping from one of the monitors on the prisoners’ cells. Only one was occupied and he read the warning with a growing sense of dread. "Depressed upper brain function, abnormal memory function…" 

Wolverine pushed open Gambit's room and wiped the sweat from his brow, it was as hot in here as it had been cold in Iceman's room. The Cajun was sprawled across his bed stark naked except for a blissful smile. Logan hesitated a moment then sat on the side of his bed and touched his cheek. No response, not even a flicker behind his closed eyelids. He shoved aside a feeling of perversity as he carefully examined the lithe and comely young man for any signs of a wound to explain the catatonia. Not a mark anywhere on the golden, tanned skin. He was reaching for the communicator when it beeped. 

"Logan," McCoy's voice was strained. "We have three down already and there may be others."

"Four," he corrected. “Remy's got it too. Who else?"

"Sabretooth and Warren."

"Shit Hank, I'm sorry."

"Bring Remy down and then help me move Creed, he's too heavy for me alone." 

"He might wake up, is it wise to move him?"

"He has a weak version of your healing factor, I may need him to…" He winced as his ethical nature twinged at what he was thinking.

"Understood."

"Have Kurt check everyone else in the mansion and wake the Professor and Jean." 

"Huh? What do you want with the psychics? Is this some kind of enemy attack, Blue?" 

"I don’t know yet, but I'll explain what I do know in the med lab. Bring him down."

The mansion was now thoroughly awake since Logan had personally roused everyone from the Professor to the wizened Japanese gardener to make sure they were alright. There were only four affected by the peculiar paralysis. They were placed in the four corners of the med lab because they were affecting the ambient temperature around them. Iceman and Angel were both cold, Warren mildly so, but Bobby to the point that the doctor had put warming blankets on him just to keep ice from condensing into a block around him. Sabretooth and Gambit were hot, with Gambit being the more extreme. A wind was blowing in the room, one that was actually rather pleasant created by the convection of the air currents around the sleepers. 

Their bodily functions were also affected quite differently. Warren's heartbeat was always fast but now it was more so, his pulse was erratic, his breathing shallow, but oddly enough his oxygen levels were elevated enough that he should have been euphoric with it. Remy's heartbeat was rapid too, his temperature and blood pressure were also high, but there were no other fever signs. His white blood cell count was normal, his pulse steady. Creed's was steady too, but dramatically slow, his heart rate would have been normal for a hibernating grizzly bear but not a man. His temperature was no more elevated than that of someone sleeping in the sun on a hot day. All of Bobby's vitals were coming in rhythmic pulses, speeding up then slowing down in a remarkably regular manner that completely confused the equipment as well as the furry blue physician attending them.

-Fall Into The Wind-

Charles positioned himself behind Warren's head and laid his hands gently on his temples. He cleared his own mind then reached out and down and fell into a world of unearthly beauty, silver, white, and blue, warmed here and there with touches of gold. Tall trees reached up to the sky but they were too far below to make out their bases and clouds wreathed and obscured the lower branches hiding the ground if there was any. He fell slowly looking around him for any sign of his winged X-man.

As often happened in other people's minds his chair had not transferred. He stood on his own legs straight and tall with no trace of the disability that burdened him in the real world. Not that this world was unreal. He knew from bitter experience that what happened in the wonderland of the mind could be more real than anything you might see on the six o’clock news. He had lost the use of his legs in just such a place between dreams and reality. A feather drifted past his face and he caught it. His downward drift slowed and he found himself suspended. A strong wind blew around him chilling him. 

"It's a little cold in here, Warren. Do you think you might raise the temperature just a bit?" The sensation of eyes on him and a gentle curiosity brushed over him. "Warren, I know you can hear me, can you appear to me in your normal form?" 

Awareness, just for a moment and there was a flicker of something maybe confusion or puzzlement, a searching for something misplaced or lost then it was gone. 

He frowned and tried a different tactic. "Hank is terribly worried about you." 

The wind grew still and the weight of the eyes left him. Then it returned full force and any sense of presence he had felt before was gone. He called and called but there was no answer but the wind sighing. 

He finally withdrew exhausted from maintaining the one sided contact. Hank was watching him intently and must have read the failure in his expression because his kind eyes misted over a moment then closed heavily. When they reopened, the man had retreated to allow the doctor room to work. 

"Once I rest I will try one of the others."

"I will run some more tests in the mean time." 

 

-Feel the Flames-

Charles drew back with a groan and Jean touched his shoulder lending him a welcome stream of energy to replace what he had spent. "It was different but the same, a brief sense of someone watching me, curiosity, then nothing but heat and flame. Angel's mind world was endless sky and wind and trees over a snowy forest. Gambit's was fire and pools of flame. In Angel's mind, the awareness came after I caught a floating feather, in Remy's it was a card, the Ace of Hearts.” He shook his head and rubbed his temples, "what does it mean, what is the connection?"

Jean shook her head mutely, tears shining in her eyes and only just held in check.

"I need to talk to Moira and possibly to a few other contacts. I need to know what each of the affected men was doing yesterday, where they went, what they ate, what they wore, who they were with, everything. Creed was under constant monitoring both video and medical sensors. Someone needs to go over that tape with a fine toothed comb. I need to know if there was anything at all, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Also have someone check the security tapes and the mansion’s environmental controls. I want to know if anyone or anything entered into the atmosphere or ventilation systems. Run a microscopic scan look for gasses, pollens, bacteria, odd humidity. Get Logan to search each room with those remarkable senses of his. There has to be a clue somewhere. Meanwhile, I am counting on you to hold them together and organize the investigation. I don't think we should upset the others with the all the details just yet so have Storm keep the children on a regular schedule. Can you do that for me, my dear? Stay strong for all their sakes?" 

"Yessir," Jean took a deep breath and schooled her features. 

"That's my brave girl. I will be back as soon as I can, and hopefully with a solution."

-Sound Of Wings-

Fur, warm soft fur, he should be wrapped in that fur. It was missing though. The music was wrong too, sweet and clear but so cold and brittle, there should be another sound, the deep rhythmic thudding of something close to him, something under that warm fur. He shifted restlessly and dropped another feather watching it drift down lazily through the endless sky. He could almost touch the thought, almost remember, but every time he came close it hurt. He longed for what was lost to him and the wind's cry echoed his sadness. His wings stretched restlessly. He shifted suddenly and violently beating his cupped wings in short hard strokes creating a thunder of trapped wind that pushed at that memory again: warm fur and a steady beating, his wings chewing the air erratically, his own heart speeding in his chest to match that other sound, that heartbeat, that heartbeat beneath the fur.

Hank jumped turning from the monitors and staring at the cot doubting for a moment if he had heard anything at all, then it came again clearly, the muffled boom and rustling of huge wings moving and displacing the air trapped inside them. He had grown accustomed to the many sounds that wings could make in the years he and Warren had been together. Warren said they had a mind of their own, but it was actually no different than the way any bird fluttered and flirted, a natural process that contributed to balance, gave sensory information, warned off predators, and even helped regulate body temperature. The sound escalated into a high thrumming, the one he usually only heard when Warren was either extremely wound up and agitated or lost in the throes of passion and just about to go over the edge. Yet he was looking at the cot, at the wings tucked under his body still and motionless.

"Logan! Come here! Do you hear that?"

The Canadian was at his side in an instant. "What the fuck? It sounds like Wings when he’s in a holier than thou pissy-assed mood, but he ain't moving. The air ain’t changing any either. It should be like a tornado.” 

“Believe me, I know how it feels,” Hank took a deep breath relieved that someone else could hear it. "That sound is his wings, I know it, the way I know his laugh, his snore, and his smell. I'm looking at his wings and they are not moving, but I can hear them." 

He walked over to the bed and cupped the cool face. "I hear you, my love. I'll find you and bring you home. I promise you, blue eyes." He kissed the cold forehead and choked back a sob before he recalled he was not alone. He raised his eyes defiantly to the other man but the faded blue eyes held no contempt or disgust, just a sadness and worry that told him more than any words of sympathy ever could. 

"I'll go tell the professor, Blue. We'll get him back and the others too and when I find out who did this to ‘em, I'll gut the fucker and bring ya back a souvenir."

Hank nodded mutely as he left. 

-Restless Flames-

Gambit moved restlessly in the sea of licking flames. He was looking for something. His hands went to his pockets and found only the flat, sharp edges of his playing cards. He pulled one out and looked at it blankly. The symbols meant something, but he could not seem to recall what. He frowned. He did not like not knowing. He hated it in fact, being in the dark, being left out. Why was he alone? Where were the emotions that constantly bombarded his other sense, his uniquely specialized empathy. His hand drifted to his forehead. People wanted him, some people, who? His brow creased. He needed their desire, hungered for it. The flames roared in agitation as his shields fell completely and only emptiness echoed back to him. 

Jean walked into the med lab reaching her hand out to stop Logan as he headed toward the door. Scott stepped up behind her and laid his hand on her shoulder just at the moment a wave of incredible psychic energy struck the entire mansion and a considerable area around it as well. Jean moaned low in her throat as the two hard bodied men pressed against her with a gasp from her husband and a growl from the feral man in front of her. She had just enough presence of mind to note that they were not the only one’s affected. Hank pulled Warren’s still form up to his chest and cradled him as he showered his face with desperate kisses and begged him to come back. 

Outside the lab, Storm was almost in a panic forcibly separating the students and shoving them into rooms and closets and anywhere she could lock them away from each other. The pre-pubescent children were staring wide eyes at things they absolutely should not see. There would be serious explanations needed and she would be darned if she was the one who was going to give them. Someone caught her from behind as she shoved a would-be Romeo into the physics lab and his Juliet into the broom closet. 

“What now?” She spun around and found herself staring into Kurt Wagner’s worried face.

“I have put all the kinder and some of the adults into the rooms alone. What is happening?”

“I have no idea, something just came over everyone,” she blinked noticing what lovely golden eyes Nightcrawler had.

“It is an attack?” He gazed at the magnificent dark skinned woman with reverence.

“I do not think so.” Her lips pursed, “I wonder if someone has lost control of his powers? Or perhaps he is playing a prank.” It was unlike Gambit to ever lose control of his hidden power and even less like him to unleash it indiscriminately and close to home where he might get caught. 

“If that is it then, beautiful one, we have nothing to worry about. The professor will control it in a short while.” He blushed as she turned a sweet smile on him. 

Charles felt the wave of untargeted desire hit and instead of clamping down on it, he followed it like a psychic rope trying to reach its source. He felt the temperature begin to rise and heard the roaring crackle of a wildfire as he pushed closer. Then the charm power broke down the formidable walls in his mind and he was flooded with memories of his past loves, of Erik with his sly sense of humor and endearing old-fashioned ways, of Moira’s cleverness and gentle down to earth style, of the exotic and powerful Lilandra. He tried to focus past them, past memories sweetened with distance and the sad haze of times lost. He caught a flicker of something out of the corner of his eye and mentally lunged for it. It was a card, a blank card, it burned and he almost dropped it. 

"Oh Erik, what is happening here,' he asked the dream shadow of his first love, his truest love." 

"I should think it is as plain as the nose on your face, Charles.” The dream voice was light, almost sing-songy, but with a regal arrogance that neither time nor experience had managed to blunt. Long fingers touched his cheek in a rare show of tenderness. “I used to say that you could not see the forest for the trees, and you would counter that each tree was an equally important part of the forest and to look at the whole was to miss the true beauty." He chuckled and kissed his forehead slowly. "Your problem is elemental, my dear."

His eyes shot open and he shut down on the wave of empathy abruptly and completely. Across the mansion and in the town of Westchester, people came out of a daze either isolated or in very compromising positions. Jean was in one of the more interesting of those positions and she wondered if the heat would ever leave her cheeks, or for that matter if she would be able to walk properly anytime soon. It was almost worth the embarrassment though to see her husband and Logan blushing furiously and trying to redress without looking at each other or her. She looked around recalling Hank's presence, but to her immense relief he was just holding Angel's hand and talking softly to him. 

Storm was vaguely aware that the attack had passed, but she was too lost in pleasure to actually care. Her satin sheets were smooth on her bare skin and Kurt worshipped her body with his mouth and hands and filled her mind and heart with his beautiful sweet words. Her long, polished nails traced a pointed ear adoringly as she wrapped her long legs around the lithe teleporter.

Xavier stared at the phone a long time before he keyed a number he had not dialed in fifteen years. He listened to the ring on the other end and almost dropped it back into the cradle twice. Then there was a click as the line opened and a long moment of pregnant silence before a deep, strong voice answered.

“Why are you calling me, Charles?” 

“I need your insight on a matter.”

“My insight? You have not asked for that in many a year. I confess that I am intrigued. Do tell.” 

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as he explained the current situation and the empathy induced illusion. “You said my problem was elemental. What did you, or rather my mental interpretation of you, mean by that?” 

“I can hardly be held to account for your subconscious and its choice of wording. However, you said that your oh-so-insufferable Angel was in a dream world of sky and wind and falling symbolic feathers. Your roguish thief inhabits a plane of fire much in keeping with his explosive ability and what is more fiery and likely to burn a man than passion and games of the heart. There are four elements, wind, fire, water, and earth. You have described to me wind and fire, go to your other two victims and peer into their secret souls and then call me back and tell me what you find there. If your Iceman and that worthless waste of teeth and claws embody water and earth as I suspect, then find their symbols as well. You have a feather and a card, you must complete the set of clues.” 

“What does it mean though, Erik?” 

“I have no idea, old friend, but I am sure it is by design, not coincidence.”

“I must agree with you. Someone is behind this, but who and to what end. Thank you for your help. I do miss your brilliant mind from time to time.”

“Only my mind, should I be insulted?”

He smiled against the receiver, “oh I miss much more than your mind, but the things I miss most were lost to us before you walked away.”

“Lost or only misplaced. Sometimes I wonder.”

“As do I, Erik. Far more often that I wish.”

“Farewell Charles.”

“Goodbye, Erik, and again, my thanks.” The click on other end sounded very loud and very final.

-Confusion Of Clues-

Logan stared down at the floor letting his eyes unfocus. Something was not right, but he could not quite put his finger on it. He stalked around the room but came back to the same spot time after time. He squatted down and stared hard at the rich wood parquet trying to glare an answer from it. The daylight slanting in the window shone on the polished surface. He brought his gaze up the side of the bed: dark blue sheets, in disarray because Hank had not left the lab to make them up, covers pushed back hastily, a couple of small fluffy down feathers stuck in the covers, more than a few blue hairs stuck everywhere, the pillow still holding the imprint of a sharp chin. He sank into his senses letting the wealth of information flow, not trying to rein it in. The air smelled of homemade cookies and coffee, Warren’s expensive cologne, sex, feathers, and the shampoo Hank used on his fur. 

Angel had come in before Hank. Logan had followed his trail through the normal actions of a man with no hint that something is wrong. He had come in from a full teaching load, made coffee for his lover and tea for him, read the paper, made some calls, fooled around on the computer, fooled around with Hank when he came in, showered, then went to bed. He touched the floor tracing the slight imprint of bare feet on hardwood, a thing most people could not see. Hank’s feet were huge and he walked on his toes and pads, less like the ape he looked like and more like a big cat. Angel’s feet were perfectly human in shape, but his modified bones and balance were entirely different. His arch was high and his heels and the pads of his feet distributed most of his weight so the toes and instep barely brushed the floor. 

He blinked and shook his head looking again to be sure of what he was seeing. There was something else on the floor, the faint fog of a third set of footprints, bare prints, tiny prints. He tracked them back to the window then followed them to the bed. Someone short, light, and most likely female had come in the window and walked to the bed. Someone with no scent whatsoever- that seemed unlikely. He jerked the blanket off the bed, then the sheets shaking them out hard then throwing them aside. He gave the pillows the same treatment pulling the cases off. 

He was not sure what he was looking for and so he almost missed it, a faint glimmer of sparkling particles in the air from Warren’s pillow and with it, a delicate silver charm. He caught it before it fluttered to the ground. It was shaped like a feather and about three inches long. It was painstakingly crafted and perfumed with something very faint but almost familiar. The same scent that the strange dust had given off. He held it closer inhaling deeply and searching the twisted and broken corridors of his memory. 

-Winds Of Memory-

Chimes swayed in the rising wind painting the jasmine and orange scented air with silvery delight. The smell of spicy green tea and roasting duck wafted on the air. She rose in a silken whisper the gold and silver threads in her navy blue kimono picking up the flickering candlelight. She laughed gently and repeated her question in her thick Shikoku accent.

He could not take his eyes from her, the long ebony hair, unbound and almost sweeping the floor. The hypnotic eyes, almost black and almond shaped in her round face. His wife, his life, his love, he reached out and touched her hand reverently noticing how coarse and thick his fingers were against her long, delicate hand. He raised that hand to his mouth and kissed the pale skin. She came to him without hesitation folding down into his lap and bowing her head against his chest so she could listen to the thunder of his heart beating. 

“Do you hear the wind, it sounds so lonely. It is looking for something.” 

“What do you mean?” he asked as he held her warm silk clad body to him. 

“The air is full of feathers and you cannot tell them apart.”

“I don’t see any feathers.”

“You are looking into the past into memories dead and gone. The answers are not here, but in a place where memories fade into wind and water, fire and ice.”

“Memories? This isn’t a memory, we’re here alone at last.” He tipped her head up and was shocked to see tears tracking down her face. “Why are you crying, baby? Please don’t cry.” 

“You have to go back.”

“No!”

“Goodbye my husband, I will wait for you in eternity even though I know you may never come to me.” 

“No! I won’t go! I won’t let you go!”

He pulled her close but she faded into darkness and he jerked awake to find himself crouching on the floor gripping the charm tightly and staring up blankly into worried blue eyes. It took him long moments to put a name to the face, then another long pause before he recalled how to speak. 

“Hank?”

“Logan, I thought it was happening to you too,” he sagged down heavily into a crouch beside him. “Last time I had to carry you to a cot, I pulled muscles in places I didn’t know I had muscles.” 

It was a small joke but it made him smile just a little and that was what he needed to find his focus and shake off the disorientation. “Nah, I’m fine Blue, but I found something. Ever see this before?” 

He was not surprised to find the answer was no. He needed to check outside under the window, and in the other rooms too, he had a feeling he would find other tokens and other footprints that did not belong. First though, he needed to find a way to shake off the memories of a time he had forgotten that was now bubbling up into his conscious like lava once the crust was broken. How long ago had it been, how many lifetimes since he had been a minor warlord in the orient, since he had loved his precious wife. She had died for him like so many others. He closed his eyes a long moment then had to reassure the doctor that he was fine all over again. He stood up with a metal on metal cracking of the joints that made him wonder just how long he had been crouched there. 

“I’ll check the other rooms in a bit, Doc. I need a drink of something stronger than juice right now.”

“Since you’re here, I’ve got bottle of good Brandy in the cupboard. I think I’ll join you.” 

“You going to be okay until we figure this out?”

“Probably not, but I’ll fake it.” 

He nodded, “gotcha. You pour, I’ll wash up.”


	2. Part 2

-Disturbed Earth-

Victor Creed had always been nearly impossible to work with from a psychic's point of view. Oh, you could give him simple commands and he might or might not obey them, but the truth of his being was locked away deep inside by shields of pain and madness. Unlike the shields psychics learn to craft to protect themselves from outside noise and influences, those erected spontaneously in moments of stress were a natural protection system used by the human mind to protect itself from some terror that might destroy it, a life saving technique of last resort. Nearly everyone with such shields constantly battled the mental illnesses that came from conflicted memories and thoughts, schizophrenia, multiple personalities, manic-depression, and sociopathy. Sabretooth had been born in a moment of some unspeakable horror, a cataclysmic tearing of the soul, spirit, and mind. His healing ability and his animal will to survive had isolated the destructive memories, and twisted his neurological pathways around the splintered remnants of whoever Victor Creed might have been before the sundering. After that someone, or more likely multiple someones, had attempted to alter and control the damaged mind and it had resisted, but the war had left traps and voids and gaping wounds everywhere. The result was a twisted and broken maze of razor sharp shards and treacherous pits, loose and crumbling debris, and darkness shot through with flashes of red and golden light. Charles picked his way through the ruins with care. He had been here before, the first time they had captured Creed. He had thought perhaps he could calm the beast and reach the man. He had realized that it was beyond him shortly after he had seen the extent of the damage. Now he was back and looking for something that could be anything. 

This contact was even harder to maintain than Angel or Gambit. He knew his X-Men and had touched their minds many times. Creed was a stranger and a hostile one at that. Nevertheless, he pressed onward, deeper into the chaotic landscape that was eerily still and silent. He scanned the shadows looking for something, some way in past the surface, then he saw it. A dull glow shone out of a deep pit in the middle of a clear area that had not been there before. He stepped to the edge and peered down seeing nothing but light and shadow. He took a deep breath, firmed his resolve and stepped over the edge to find himself falling down into warm, golden light. 

This world was underground, the colors of the earth were all around him, greys, browns, reds, tawny shading to gold, soot deepening to black, and crystal bright flecks here and there that set the mellow light to twinkling back like promises of hidden treasure. It was strikingly beautiful like the badlands of North Dakota. Stone pillars and columns were frozen in fantastic tableaus, the bands of colour in the walls told ancient tales that were just beyond his ability to grasp. The air smelled of copper and brass and fresh turned soil. The air was heavy though not stale, just oppressive with the weight of countless ages. 

"Victor Creed, I know you are here, can you hear me?" He had a brief impression of eyes half opening lazily, confusion, then a ripple of restlessness. A low growl reverberated around him and it sounded like the creaking of the earth just before a quake. "You do hear me. Why are you just lying here, why aren't you fighting? I never thought that you would just take whatever is happening to you like a whipped pup, rolling over and showing belly, I thought you were fierce and dangerous." 

The growl deepened and the hot air stirred in a shudder as if unused to moving. 

"That's it, wake up Sabretooth. This is an attack of some kind. Someone is using you, they are chaining you here against your will." 

That did the trick, all hell broke loose. Balls of fire and flashes of lightning shot up from around him crashing into the stone cavern and shattering stalagmites and stalactites. For a moment, the world of destruction he had seen above seemed interposed on top of the cavern like a ghost image, flickering and strengthening then fading. Sabretooth was fighting to find himself. 

"That's it! You're trapped here, a prisoner, fight!" 

Out of the chaos he caught sight of someone, a child of no more than nine or ten, a blond haired boy, whip thin and marked with raw lash marks and welts kneeling in chains. The cavern around him became what looked like an earth cellar. Chains, heavy logging chains secured with padlocks, bound him to rings in the floor. A broken mirror reflected back his nude, malnourished body and his amber eyes without pupil or whites. He growled and slavered and struggled against the chains. Charles ran toward the child but before he could reach him, the cellar disappeared and the boy with it and he was once again in a empty cavern feeling the warm, heavy light sinking into his bones. He reached out a hand toward where the apparition had been and caught something he at first took to be a splinter of stone. He pulled it closer to his face in the dim light and saw that it was a claw, black and deeply curved, feline looking. Victor had sent him the token of earth. 

\- Thin Ice -

The cold bit deeply chilling him to the bone as he slipped and went down to his knees on the shifting rolling ice flow. "Bobby, I know you're here. I need to speak with you. It's urgent and it's your watch." Xavier sighed and looked for a new tactic. Iceman was proving to be the hardest to contact. Remy had responded to his own need for emotion, Warren to his love for Hank, Victor to his anger at being caged, but what exactly did Bobby feel strongly about. "Your new issue of GI Joe Comics came in the mail today. I think they killed off your favorite character." 

Nothing. 

"You're missing that cartoon you like, the one you always watch, with the robot car things."

No.

"The IRS called about a tax return you did, they need to speak with you immediately!"

Nada. 

He closed his eyes searching every conversation with or about the frozen mutant. "That new movie opens today, the one with the Angels fighting each other with machine guns."

No response. What was it, what would snap him out of it. He was not a stickler for duty like Scott, he was not naturally oppositional like Logan, he was not attached to his siblings like Pete, but there had to be something or someone. His eyes shot open and he smiled as it finally hit him.

"Spiderman needs you urgently. He might be in trouble." 

That did it. The water in front of him erupted into twisting water spouts, the ocean's rhythmic surf became violent. The ice he was standing on was tossed by wave after wave, the mass splintering and cracking. "Come on Robert, he needs you. Spiderman needs you. He's in terrible danger. Give me the token so I can set you free then you can go to him, hurry Iceman, time is running out!"

Then it fell in front of him, a snowflake, but not like any other, huge and delicate and seemingly woven of the purest crystal. He caught it and held it tight quickly leaping up out of his mind as the ice floe shattered and sank into the freezing ocean. 

-Past Lives

Logan took a deep breath. Every instinct in his body told him to stay away from this memory above all others. He looked at the Professor who was holding the small feather charm. He did not want to remember any more of his past, any of the loves who were taken from him, any of the pain he had caused, but the professor needed the real tokens to go with the symbolic ones. He took a deep breath and stepped into the prison cell. His breath shook as he forced himself to exhale and drop into a crouch. He had decided to do Creed next and get it over with because if there was anyone who was likely to trigger another hidden memory of the past it was this man that was more like him than any other being. They had pursued each other relentlessly, mutilated each other, killed the other's companions, friends, and lovers, but they had never succeeded in killing each other. They were bound together somehow in some sick parody of brotherhood, a place beyond hatred. 

There was a twinkle of dust, again came the scent of jasmine, then he was in a vast house somewhere familiar. There was a chill in the air and the big fireplaces in every room barely took the edge off. He was creeping through the house trying not to alert someone -Mama- that he was up out of bed. He had been sick for so long, but now he felt better, stronger, healthier. Once the fever had broken everything had seemed so new, colors brighter, smells stronger, sounds so much louder and clearer. He could even hear her -Mama's- heart beating from the kitchen where the smell of baking bread was rising and filling the house. 

He opened the door as quietly as he could. Victor's dad had been coming over a lot lately, coming drunk, and it scared her, his mama. They were locking the door in the daytime and the latch was up high. He had to stand on tip-toes. He was shorter than most of the other boys, way shorter than Victor, but none of the others dared to pick on him because Victor would hurt them. He sometimes got that blank look in his eyes when he was hitting them, sometimes it was almost like his eyes changed colour from the blue that was an awful lot like his eyes according to the teacher to a weird cat like color, orangey-red. It scared him when Vic got like that, because he did not seem to want to stop hitting then, even when the bully was crying and begging forgiveness. 

He stepped outside wincing as the northern wind cut right through his clothes. He was not supposed to be out of bed unless Mama or Daddy was with him because he had been sick for over a year, but he was worried. Victor always came, every day, to see him, but he had not come in two months. Daddy had said good riddance, but Mama seemed strange and now that he was better and could smell, he knew she was afraid whenever he asked about Victor. He moved quietly through the thick carpet of fallen leaves making very little sound. He stopped often listening to the animals around him smelling the hundreds of scents in the wind. Victor and he had stalked these woods from the time they could walk until he fell sick, but his scent was old and fading. 

He crept out of the woods staring at the rickety old shack the Creeds lived in. Victor's dad drank a lot, he hunted and trapped but whatever money he made went to buy whiskey not fix up his homestead. There were big gaps in the boards of the walls, the dirt was washed away under the house leaving holes down into the cellar. The smells coming from that cellar were awful, excrement, urine, decay, and death. Victor had told him a secret a long time ago, that his mama had not run off like everyone thought, that his daddy had thrown her down in the basement crying and screaming and left her there. 

He ran across the yard silently keeping in a low crouch. He did not know how he knew to do these things, but it came naturally. He threw his head back and caught a scent that was sort of like Victor's but just a little wrong and sick smelling, really sick smelling. He crept closer to one of the holes into the cellar and peered in even though he knew he would not be able to see into the dark, but he could somehow, he saw it all clear as day and wished that he had not. Victor was in the basement, naked, and all chained up. He was different, even bigger, and his eyes were all orange, nothing human in them at all. He was growling like some kind of animal and his dad was standing over him hitting him with a wide leather belt, over and over. He could smell the alcohol and blood and the blood was sick, feverish, like his had been. Victor's dad was screaming at him calling him monster, asking him why he would not die, what evil thing was in him. Victor growled and lunged at him, but something brought him up short, chains, huge chains. Daddy had chains like that for moving the trees he cut down from the woods to town. 

Victor's dad cursed and threw an empty bottle at him striking him above the eye with it then turned and stomped upstairs into the house. Logan -no James, his name was James- scrambled around behind the woodpile and hid until he exited the house and staggered out to to the barn. A short while later he rode away towards town. He crept around to the door. Yes, Logan was not born yet, now he was just the runt, little James Howlett and he was scared to death as he turned the handle and it opened onto a filthy room littered with broken bottles. Victor's school books were torn to shreds and lying forgotten in the puddles of piss and vomit on the floor. There were gaps down to the cellar and the smell from down there was even worse. He felt nauseous and dizzy and his blood was beginning to burn in a way that made him know the illness was coming back. He found the trap door. It was not closed all the way. He was not sure he would be able to lift it even with that help, but it was a lot lighter than it looked. The steps were uneven and skewed all over the place. He lost his footing and half fell down the last three. 

He flailed out and struck something that shattered like glass. His eyes adjusted and he could see himself reflected back in the shards of a broken mirror. He was small with a pasty pale face pinched with strain. 

" Jimmy, that you?" The voice sounded familiar and not and it sounded like it did not believe it was him at all like it did not believe that anything was real any more. "It smells like you, usually the dreams don't smell like nothing."

"Victor?" he whispered trying to choke down the panic rising in him. "Where you been, you stopped coming to check on me?" 

Victor laughed and it sounded crazy like the old woman the doctors had taken away from the Harris farm before he had fallen ill. 

"Victor, stop it, you ain't crazy so don't you laugh like that!"

" Am I dead then, Jimmy Boy? Or maybe yer dead and a ghost come to wait fer me to die too. I been trying but it don't work. My mind is all hot and my blood hurts. It just keeps healing up."

"You ain't dead neither of us is You got it too, what I was sick with. I'll take you back to my house, get the doctor for you. I'm feeling better now."

" He'll find me there, you too. He told me- Shit, you gotta get outta here, Jimmy, he's coming back. I hear his horse on the road. He'll kill you."

"Come on, you come with me. He can't hit you like that. I won't let him, I'll tell Daddy and he'll stop him." 

"Can't nobody stop him, nobody!" The last words turned into a furious growl like nothing human. James crawled forward through the filth and cried out. Victor was growling like that. Long fangs were bared and his eyes were mad glowing like coals. His hair was matted up with filth and blood. His fingernails were like claws, long and curving and he was definitely bigger, a lot bigger. 

He reached out and touched the chains that wrapped around his naked wrists, they were slick with blood but there were no wounds on his wrists. His hand tightened on the manacles as anger swept through him and they crumpled in his grasp like paper. He howled himself and tore at the chains ripping them away from his only friend. The door burst open and he turned and lunged. A two by four brought him up short. His last memory before the darkness took him was Victor's snarled warning to his father, "I won't let you hurt my brother!"

"NO!" Logan jumped up and staggered back holding his head as if that could stop the flood of memories, waking up in his own bed, Victor by his side, his dad going downstairs to see what Mr. Creed was shouting about, gun shots, bone claws tearing through knuckles, his mother's screams, not at Creed, not at her husband's death but at him and Victor, that look like they were monsters or demons, wild flight through the woods with dogs on their trail, hunger, hunting, blood, fear, wild free joy. "That was not me, not him, we are not, I can't remember that, I don't want to remember that!"

"Logan, relax, let me dim it for you." 

"No, no, I don't want you to do that, Chuck. I'm alright now. They're my memories and I guess I might want them someday."

"As you wish, what did you find, my friend." 

He handed him the small silver charm. "I need a break and a drink before I do the next one. When I get my hands on the sick fuck doing this to us, I swear I'll kill it myself." 

"It, why do you say 'it', Wolverine?" 

"I don't know, I just- well nothing human could come through a locked door into a prison cell leaving prints inside but not outside and leave something that smells like jasmine, but leave no scent themselves.?"

"So you're suggesting our enemy is either supernatural or some sort of manifestation of another sort."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Rest Logan then meet me at Iceman's room. I am sorry that you have to go through this, but I am afraid to risk exposing anyone else without your unique healing gift to this dust." 

"I understand. You wouldn't call it a gift though if you had to live through the pain of changing." 

"The pain of changing? Did you suffer as your gifts emerged? Is that what you remembered?"

"Maybe I'll tell you later, maybe not." He trudged away wearily feeling older than he had in a long time.


End file.
